Addiction
by justsomeboy
Summary: Kakashi has an addiction - and Iruka can't help but fall into it with him.


I do not own Naruto, I merely bend and twist it to suit my wicked wants.

Iruka had always threatened to pass his Jounin exam and join ANBU if Kakashi didn't quit. quit. It was something like a drug for the other ninja, he said – something that he was addicted to, and if he couldn't get Kakashi to let it go – he would fall into it with him.

Kakashi wouldn't let it go. So, Umino Iruka took action.

Passing the Jounin exam was easy. Iruka was a high-level Chuunin, despite all pretenses of being nothing more than a humble schoolteacher. He had to be a high level, in order to avoid the nonsense traps and pranks pulled by his more clever students, and Kakashi.

Passing the ANBU exam was harder. He was gone for a month – off to the woods for survival, surveillance, stealth and strength tests. He wasn't sure how he made it through – but they presented him with that white mask, with a long blue line, like the scar on his face, across the nose, and waves coming from his cheek and jaw – they branded him with the ANBU crest on the top of his left arm, and he went home, to his dusty apartment, to await his first assignment.

Kakashi came that night – there was anger in his face as he pulled off his mask and hitai-ate and slammed Iruka into the wall before realizing that the Jounin – no, ANBU – had slipped out of his robe and was behind him.

"Why?!" It was as close to yelling as Kakashi would ever come, because when he finally managed to get his hands on the evasive Iruka, they were both panting, sweating, Iruka in only a pair of PJ bottoms and Kakashi sitting on top of his body with Iruka's legs caught in his arms, while Kakashi's strong hands pinned his wrists to his shoulders. It was an awkward position. It hurt.

"I told you," Iruka said calmly, if not tightly, due to his awkwardly curled body, Kakashi sitting on his ribs. "If I can't make you give it up, I'm going down with you."

"You… You..!!" Kakashi didn't have words for how angry he was – how frustrated. He hadn't wanted Iruka to join ANBU, because he knew that if he did, the sweet, sweet man he slept with, would become someone else. Just as Kakashi had become someone else, over his years with the force that stripped him of his name and his morals.

His beautiful lover would become another nameless, faceless, ugly killer.

"You don't understand," He finally settled on saying, releasing Iruka's legs and huddling himself over the warm, broad chest, tucking his unmasked face into the soft, damn neck. "You don't understand."

"I do," Iruka protested, his fingers reaching to card through Kakashi's silver hair, his lips pressed into the other young mans' forehead. "I do understand. I understand that I'm losing you. I understand that every time I let you walk out that door with that face on, there's a chance that the man I love won't be coming home to me."

It struck Kakashi suddenly – how much pain he was causing his younger lover. He could only imagine how terrifying it would be to sit at home, heartsick, waiting for a lover to come back from a mission, only to have a man he didn't know walk through the door, ignore him completely, disappear into the bathroom… Many a time when Kakashi came home from ANBU missions, Iruka sat at the kitchen table, saying nothing to him, just staring into his mug, and when Kakashi got out of the bathroom, clean of blood, the mask hidden at the bottom of the closet, right where it belonged, Iruka was in bed, curled up small in the fetal position, like a child afraid of being struck in his sleep.

Kakashi would know that feeling now – he would know how terrifying all of it could be.

And while that wasn't Iruka's intention, that was just the way things were.

"You're not losing me." It's a weak, almost childish whisper.

"Yes, my love, I was." Iruka kisses Kakashi's hair, and looks up at his ANBU mask, sitting on the desk. "But not anymore."

It's many minutes, before the two of them get up off the floor, and Kakashi drags them into Iruka's large, soft bed – a luxury he would never allow himself – stripping his lover of clothing and they lay close together until Kakashi winds down enough to sleep.

When he wakes up, Iruka is gone, and so is the ANBU mask.

And so Kakashi sits at the kitchen table for what feels like days, staring into his mug of tea, until a man he doesn't know walks through the door and past him, into the bathroom.

Iruka doesn't look at him.

And now Kakashi knows –

I'm losing you.

How it feels –

I'm going down with you.

To be completely and utterly –

I love you.

Helpless.


End file.
